Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Hispanic Heritage Month 2015- Artist Dulce Pinzon

Talk about a strong, confident Latina Artist!

Dulce Pinzon

is a successful young artist with an edge. Out of all her series of works I connect the most with "The Real Story of the Superheroes".

Catwoman - Minerva Valencia from Puebla. Works as a nanny in New York she sends 400 dollars a week.

The Real Story of the Superheroes

The Real Story of the Superheroes is a satirical, documentary-style body of work, featuring ordinary men and women in their work environment in New York. They are immigrants donning superhero garb, with the objective of raising questions about our definition of heroism after 9/11 and our ignorance of the workforce that fuels our ever-consuming economy.

I also aim to create awareness on the immigration issue in this country with my work, entitled #MurrietaProtest and #DREAMers. #MurrietaProtest, addresses a shameful display of anti-immigrant sentiment in this country- specifically an event that took place in California in July of 2014. A response to #MurrietaProtest came after Obamas Executive Actions on Immigration, entitle #DREAMers. Activism by young immigrants at the Iowa freedom summit January 2015 and attendance to Obamas remarks at Town Hall at Florida International University Miami held April 2015.Consequently, my explorations led me to appropriate images online and represent found selfies. By painting from images that are inherently informal and impermanent, I seek to draw attention to how we interpret our engagement with one another as a series of fleeting yet meaningful encounters, thereby pointing a lens to our culture of instant gratification metaphorically pressing pause. I slow down the viewers engagement by painting the portraits the size of a cell phone. This slows down the viewer’s gaze. The “gaze” has been theorized as a means of exerting power through the act of looking; by encouraging a slower gaze in my repainted selfies. I encourage the viewer to consider the lives of others. In this regard, my paintings serve to celebrate the diversity within the Latino community in the United States and to explore the complex ways in which people negotiate issues of ethnic identity using social media as a means of social activism.

On her website she states:After September 11, the notion of the “hero” began to rear its head in the public consciousness more and more frequently. The notion served a necessity in a time of national and global crisis to acknowledge those who showed extraordinary courage or determination in the face of danger, sometimes even sacrificing their lives in an attempt to save others. However, in the whirlwind of journalism surrounding these deservedly front-page disasters and emergencies, it is easy to take for granted the heroes who sacrifice immeasurable life and labor in their day to day lives for the good of others, but do so in a somewhat less spectacular setting. The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of the hero who has gone unnoticed. It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive. The Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent from workers in the US. Conversely, the US economy has quietly become dependent on the labor of Mexican immigrants. Along with the depth of their sacrifice, it is the quietness of this dependence which makes Mexican immigrant workers a subject of interest. The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper. This project consists of 20 color photographs of Mexican and Latino immigrants dressed in the costumes of popular American and Mexican superheroes. Each photo pictures the worker/superhero in their work environment, and is accompanied by a short text including the worker’s name, their hometown, the number of years they have been working in New York, and the amount of money they send to their families each week. http://www.dulcepinzon.com/